One of the things that I've thought about back in the days of poorly looped animated gifs and Java applets was those annoying flame gifs that didn't loop right. A project that I tinkered with (never finished) was creating a cellular automata that creates a flame like structure.
For a Java applet, it would have just continued on forever with random fuel being added. However, a different application of the 'fuel' for the flame would have had it loop over some period.
The other part is that with animated gifs and a 256 color pallet, one could index the flame color. Roughly for RGB this is step 3 through 0,0,0 -> 255,0,0 -> 255,255,0 -> 255,255,255 (not perfect, but it kind of works for a proof of concept).
And then, the value of a cell is a function of the cells below it in the previous time iteration.
With the fuel rows at some point looping (if written that way), so too would the overall frame loop at some point... and you could have a perfectly looping flame gif.
While that's all well and good, flame gifs are kind of a 90s thing... but my interest in reviving that old code coincides with me occasionally wondering "what could I do if I made a volumetric display?"
For a Java applet, it would have just continued on forever with random fuel being added. However, a different application of the 'fuel' for the flame would have had it loop over some period.
The other part is that with animated gifs and a 256 color pallet, one could index the flame color. Roughly for RGB this is step 3 through 0,0,0 -> 255,0,0 -> 255,255,0 -> 255,255,255 (not perfect, but it kind of works for a proof of concept).
And then, the value of a cell is a function of the cells below it in the previous time iteration.
With the fuel rows at some point looping (if written that way), so too would the overall frame loop at some point... and you could have a perfectly looping flame gif.
While that's all well and good, flame gifs are kind of a 90s thing... but my interest in reviving that old code coincides with me occasionally wondering "what could I do if I made a volumetric display?"